Episode 241: Enhancing Public Safety with Airwise’s Drone Solutions with Josh O’Leary

Episode notes

Who is driving drone innovation and what do you need to know?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

In this episode:

How does Airwise streamline regulatory compliance and enhance drone operations for first responders?

Where is the new hub for drone innovation?

How is Oklahoma State University leading the charge in driving drone research and innovation?

Find out from Josh O’Leary - the Chief Technology Officer for Airwise Solutions .

Airwise provides regulatory compliance for the FAA and integrates data from various sources to offer a common operating picture. They specialize in drone operations for first responders, including accident reconstruction, scene evaluation, and satellite fire detection. Airwise also streamlines the process of filing Special Governmental Interest (SGI) requests with the FAA through a digital system.

Tulsa is emerging as a hub for drone innovation, supported by initiatives like the BVLOS corridor and the DFR program, with Oklahoma State University playing a pivotal role in driving research and innovation in the drone industry.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro to the Metro Fire Chiefs miniseries in Tulsa
2. 0:40 Josh O'Leary of Airwise joins
3. 1:04 What Airwise does: FAA regulatory compliance
4. 2:07 The growing drone wave and first responders
5. 5:12 UA Sidekick and the regulatory piece
6. 7:59 Why Tulsa is a hub for drone innovation
7. 11:34 What DFR and an RTIC are
8. 14:03 Oklahoma State University's role
9. 15:46 The next ten years for Airwise and Tulsa
10. 17:47 Wrap
11. 18:07 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

What does Airwise do for fire departments and public safety agencies?

Josh O'Leary says Airwise provides FAA regulatory compliance, including digital filing of special governmental interest requests and NOTAMs. It also offers a common operating picture showing trucks, personnel, drones, weather and GIS layers in one spot, plus a cloud-based photogrammetry package for first responders that processes nadir, oblique and ground photos into 3D models quickly.

Hear it at 1:04

How does Airwise speed up filing a special governmental interest request with the FAA?

Josh O'Leary explains that the old process was a PDF form that had to be scanned and sent while driving to a scene. Airwise has the only digital SGI inside the app. You draw the area on the map with your finger, send it through a direct pipe to the FAA, and they see it immediately with no risk of transposing latitude and longitude. The goal is to make it so fast a phone call is not even needed.

Hear it at 2:55

What is unique about the drone as first responder project in Tulsa?

Josh O'Leary says Tulsa is running the first blue SUAS DFR program, meaning all US-based software and hardware. A Skydio docked drone sits on top of a city park, deployed remotely beyond visual line of sight. Tulsa Fire operates it with Airwise providing the common operating picture and regulatory environment, proving the safety case for drones in a suburban area with more population than typical rural test corridors.

Hear it at 6:11

Why was Tulsa chosen as a tech hub for drones and autonomy?

Josh O'Leary says Oklahoma has a rich aviation history with maintenance facilities and Tinker Air Force Base. Tulsa Innovation Labs won federal EDA grant money to build a beyond visual line of sight corridor. Then Tulsa was designated by the federal government as the only tech hub for autonomy and drones, putting it at the forefront for federal funding and proving drones can be used safely across the country.

Hear it at 7:59

What are the three levels of drone as first responder according to Josh O'Leary?

The base level is an officer with a drone in the car who pulls it out on scene. The middle tier is putting a 5G-enabled drone on the ground and having someone remotely fly it while the officer does other work. The final level is docked drones at fixed locations across a city, deployed remotely beyond visual line of sight whenever a call comes in within their coverage radius.

Hear it at 11:52

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 241 transcript

Enhancing Public Safety with Airwise’s Drone Solutions with Josh O’Leary

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Josh O'Leary

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to this mini-series of the Smart Firefighting Podcast. Today, we're covering stories from outside Metro Fire Chiefs Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where fire chiefs from the world's largest metros gathered. We had various sessions with drone experts to discuss drone hardware, software, and innovation ecosystem developments. Tulsa Fire Department and Oklahoma State University are spearheading some impressive new technology initiatives like drone as a first responder, and it was an honor to witness their cutting-edge efforts firsthand. Enjoy. All right, we are here at the Tulsa Fire Academy, training academy, alongside Josh O'Leary from Airwise. Josh, how you doing?

[0:42] Josh O'Leary: I'm doing well. How are you doing?

[0:44] Kevin Sofen: Doing well. We're here in Tulsa. It's my first time here with the Metro Fire Chiefs Conference, as well as here talking with you amongst some other partners of yours doing some pretty exciting stuff with drones here in Tulsa. So for those of us that have no idea about who, what, when, where, why, Airwise, give me the kind of high-level scoop of what is Airwise?

[1:04] Josh O'Leary: Airwise is a lot of things, but what we do is we provide regulatory compliance for the FAA, right? We do LANs for the coordination, we provide SGI digitally, we can file NOTAMs for you. We also have a common operating picture, and it's not just something that's like specific to one company. So we bring in all the data into a truly common operating picture, like where you can see your trucks, your cars, your officers, your firefighters, your drones in the air, ADS-B, weather overlays. We also do satellite fire detection. The list goes on and on, but that way you can see all of your information in one spot so you know what's actually going on, all your video streaming, and any kind of GIS layer that you might want. We also have a nice photogrammetry package, which is really made for first responders so that it's super easy to use. you dump your photos in, it can be nadir photos, oblique photos, it could be a mixture of, you could even mix some from the ground from your phone onto it and it only makes your models better. And it's like really is made to be super easy and it's all on the cloud, it's very fast, processing happens very quickly and they're very robust models.

[2:07] Kevin Sofen: And it seems like, I mean, we've all kind of seen this drone wave kind of continue to grow, maybe tsunami might even be a better way to say it, starting kind of in the mid to 2014, 15, 16, and then it was more than just a piece of plastic flying in the sky, but all of a sudden you could put these different sensors and cameras on it, and then it really continued to be, well, what else can you do with it? And as I've seen you kind of play around with Airwise, I've started to see, okay, wow, like from being able to, I mean, what you just showed me, of being able to do this accident reconstruction and being able to do, just being able to kind of do kind of scene evaluation. I was very impressed with what I was seeing right there. Tell me a little bit about how that works with how you are capturing content, processing that content, and then sort of what does that allow first responders, fire, police, EMS to be able to do with that kind of information?

[2:55] Josh O'Leary: There's a lot to do there. So for first responders, we find that you have multiple avenues for using these tools. They could just be for Overwatch. Maybe using that common operating picture with video streaming allows you to know where a video is being taken and what you're seeing, where your officers or firefighters are, so that now you know where everything is. It could also be, as you said, accident reconstruction. You need to have a quick flight plan to go and collect that data. So you make that on our system, you would deploy it to the drone flies it autonomously, you then push that data to the cloud and the cloud makes the model. And then now you can do your reconstruction. You can dig measurements. You have everything for posterity, original photos included, but then the really nice model 3Ds and my goodness, an LAS file, so a point cloud, an ortho if you want it, and then of course the mesh, the model, we're leaving out so many pieces, right? Like if you are, say that the president is flying into town and you get a TFR put up over your area, you still need to fly because there's still fires and there's still bad guys. Well, you have to file an SGI, special governmental interest, right? That's used to be, that was a piece of paper that you had a PDF that you would like fill it out and you would scan it, send it to the FAA, give them a call. And they were very good to answer, but that's still a long process. And you're doing this while driving somewhere, right? That's not safe and that's not efficient for anybody. So we are the only ones that actually have it as a digital thing inside of our app. So like inside of the app, you go and you do an SGI, you lay out the pay, the area, you go, okay, you send all the data you need. The FAA gets it immediately. We actually have a direct pipe to them and they go, okay, they see it pops up. It shows where you drew with your finger on the map so that they know exactly where you need to be. There actually used to be a lot of problems with this because people would be waking up late at night because that's when things happen and they would transpose Latin long, and so they'd be telling they needed SGI somewhere on a different part of the planet. And so now, when you do it right there, you know you're getting it. So the FAA really likes this because it makes it more precise and quick for them. And then that map pulls up right in front of them, they call you immediately right now, and then you go, okay, this is it, we're all on board, and boom, you're done, it shows up on your app, you're ready to go. It's actually being going further forward, we're going to even make that smoother where the phone call doesn't even need to happen, that's the goal for everybody, right? trying to make it as fast and safe for first responders as possible, so is the FAA, they are very on board with trying to make everybody safe.

[5:12] Kevin Sofen: I mean, I know you just talked about it from this regulatory component, again, drones continue to become part of everyday life, not only from a consumer standpoint, from public safety, but this kind of regulatory piece, so I want to kind of double click into that more about, I know we had Mike O'Shea from FAA, which he said a podcast post yesterday, I know he talks a lot about with his presentation, what's on slide one? It always comes back to safety, but there are kind of, within these safety protocols, you know, there are some of these rules that we need to follow and it's sort of this evolution of it's not toys in the sky, it's these are basically almost looked at the same way as planes. There's public safety aviation and kind of looking at the NASA, ARS, ASRS program in terms of reporting, but within this component of public safety aviation and following the rules and the rules really being there to ideally drive safety and drive innovation. Sort of what's your take on that and how does Airwise fit into this and what are your thoughts?

[6:11] Josh O'Leary: So regulatory-wise, our piece is called UA Sidekick. It's our app for that. And really, Sidekick is really something you want on everybody's phone that does this because we do need to help all of law enforcement and public safety, fire, everybody be on board with letting the FAA know what's going on at a given moment, right? So that we can prove the use case over time to the FAA. Cause I mean, they're the ruling body of what happens in the air here. And so we want to make sure that we are giving them the data they need to go, okay, right now you want to fly around that building? Well, that's tactical, you know, BV loss. We will let you do that for now. And they've been letting everybody do that. And they've been proving that safe, right? Then the next step is, hey, we want to do a drone in the box, truly BV loss. And that's something that we're working with Tulsa Fire on. We already, and Skydio, they have their dock drone on top of one of our big parks, and we're running our common operating picture in the regulatory environment for it, and Tulsa Fire is deploying it. And so we're working through all the pieces there to show the safety case for that. And also, if you'll think about it, that's all US-based software and US-based hardware. We're some of the only, as far as I know, we're the only ones doing that in the country right now. I'm sure that won't be for long, but it's a big push to get everything made here in the US, software and hardware. But that's it, I'm trying to make sure answering your question here.

[7:27] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, no, that's great. I mean, it's all evolution of anything setting up to the next question. I know we're in Tulsa, and not by accident. I mean, Tulsa is embarking on something that hasn't been done before, and from talking with Gabe Graveline, who's really kind of spearheading a lot of this. He was showing me some of the stuff at the gathering with some of the initial Skydio drones that are out there. And I know there's DFR being done in other places, or RTIC, as you just mentioned. But what's happening here in Tulsa that's unique, and tell me about the exciting stuff happening here in Tulsa.

[7:59] Josh O'Leary: Tulsa has been, it's a fascinating time actually for us right now, because we've historically been an oil and gas energy type area, state, city. And now we're actually transitioning a lot more over to tech. And it's one of those things also, Oklahoma actually has a very rich aviation history. We have a lot of EMRO, maintenance, repair and overhaul for all the major airlines. We have Tinker Air Force Base, which is a huge Air Force Base. And so it's actually something that we're trying actually revitalize, not revitalize, but expand, right, to move it into the unmanned area. And so here we are, Tulsa in general, we have a great group called Tulsa Innovation Labs, which is funded by some very philanthropic families here in town. And they're the ones who went to the EDA to go, hey, we want to make Tulsa better on a technology level, we want to see how we can build back better, right, the BBB, right. And so we won some of that grant money. And then that was being put in place to then make a BV loss corridor so that you can now practice in Oklahoma in multiple places at this point. And we're going to be able to do a 114 nautical mile run all the way from North Tulsa up to Pawhuska down to Stillwater and then back. So this is an extension to that because now that's kind of rural but not always a little bit of suburban area there. But this now where we're doing the DFR project is much more suburban. And it's a major park right next to a river. We have some infrastructure across the river. I mean, it's a great use case for everybody to show, hey, this can be safely done in an area with a lot more population. So we're doing that here. So one of the pieces, as I go on from Tulsa Innovation Labs, pardon me as I bounce all over the place here.

[9:35] Kevin Sofen: That's how we roll here.

[9:36] Josh O'Leary: That's how we roll. Awesome. So the next layer from the EDA and the Build Back Better Money was then the Tech Hub designation. So Tulsa was then given through the work of TIL and also some of our, like Oklahoma State University and the University of Tulsa, the designation as a tech hub. And we were also the only city given the designation of autonomy and drones. And so that really puts us at the forefront of any kind of federal money that might be coming out. for those kinds of items, example, DFR, and then pushing that further out through the city, doing these BV loss corridors to prove it in the country so that we can do this everywhere. Because the DFR project is like the spear tip, right? It's going like, hey, we wanna do a beyond visual line of sight work and we wanna show it safe. But then that's not the only use case for it, right? So you could be putting a drone in the box at a substation, electrical substation. You could have it at a refinery. You could have it at a store and it could be being used for security. be used for doing storm assessment. It could be used for, you know, I was still about going back to DFR type things like lost children. We didn't have a drone on top of that building at the park for like 30 minutes. And we were already getting calls, Oh, there's lost kids. And you're like, I mean, like it just was instantaneous, like gratification of the entire project, right? It's like, Oh wow. That's okay. They need this right now. Right. But then you go back and like infrastructure, you talk about power lines, oil pipelines, water pipelines, you pick it. That's miserable to inspect now. They're doing it with manned aircraft, guys flying Cessnas, looking out the window going, yeah, it looks okay to me. That's not very efficient or accurate. Being able to fly a drone over that, where you're getting photographic evidence or video depends on how you want to do it, of an entire line that goes for hundreds of miles. Well, you could do that in hops with a fixed wing drone. That makes infrastructure inspection safer, faster, and more accurate. There's lots of layers to this that we can and expand and make our country very powerful and really start leading the drone globally, the drone industry globally, because right now we're not, we need to fix that.

[11:34] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and for those that maybe aren't overly familiar on exactly what DFR is and what RTIC is, give me a high level 101 of what is it and why is it something that can really continue to be a game changer for better for public safety?

[11:52] Josh O'Leary: So, drone as a first responder, there's different levels of, I guess, the way people define it. So, I'll use my definitions which people may or may not agree with. But some people look at it as drone as a first responder, could be, I have drone in the back of the car and I pull it out and use it to find somebody or to get understanding and awareness about what's behind that house. That's the base layer that everybody's functioning at if they have a drone program now. The next layer up is, okay, can I have that same officer or firefighter show up, put a drone that's say 5G enabled on the ground, walk away from it, go do their job while somebody remotely flies that drone? And then it kind of is a force multiplier in that way. That's still, once again, it's a regulatory thing. It's still up for debate, but that's like that middle tier. And then what I would consider the final level of VFR is where you have like a docked drone somewhere, fixed locations all over a particular city. Those are deployed remotely beyond visual line of sight to go whenever something happens within their radius of coverage. It says DFR on three levels. Then in terms of RTICs, real-time information center, some people refer to them as real-time crime centers. There's different words for them, but that's where you try and fuse as much of the data coming from a city into one spot, so people can make good decisions about what's happening. That's where something like our common operation picture is very helpful for something like that. So you'll be able to see all your GIS data, your video feeds, your telemetry feeds from ground and air assets, knowing where everybody is.

[13:26] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well said, thank you. And I think it's exciting to see it evolve and particularly with what's happening here in Tulsa being the, regardless of politics, the first blue SUAS DFR program that's happening here. And it does just seem like there's just like a little buzz of activity here in Tulsa. And I also give a lot of credit to OK State, particularly James, who we met last night, who we met throughout the week. And yeah, what's OER's involvement and OK States' involvement and continued to kind of drive this innovation for the world, for the country, but particularly within Tulsa, what's their role and involvement?

[14:03] Josh O'Leary: So their huge role, first of all, right? So they work very closely with TIL, Tulsa Innovation Labs, to find out how they want to use the funding to create these infrastructures so that we can make a blueprint for the country on how to use drones in a safe way in line of sight, beyond line of sight, all of that. So I will say also Oklahoma State has one of the most robust drone programs anywhere in the country. And so O-Air is a piece of that and that's Oklahoma Institute or Oklahoma Aeronautical Institute for Research and Education. And so that's where we go, okay, hey, I have this particular project that I need to do, whether it's like, I'm talking a lot about DFR, but there's weather initiatives that they're doing. There's counter UAS initiatives that they're doing. There's just all these layers of everything you need to figure out how to use drones safely in the environment. And so they do a lot of that and they have, because they are a university and they're also a land grant college, so they actually get federal funds for doing things like this, is like they can go, okay, that's an interesting problem that maybe commercial isn't gonna go after because it's not a lot of money in it right now, but it's important to the overall picture. So that's where universities and academia in general can become very helpful to like a commercial entity. Like we may have something that we go, well, that's interesting, but it's not commercially helpful to us, so we can't spend our investors' money on it. Well, they can go, well, yeah, you can't, but if we don't do it, then you may not be able to do your job, so we'll pick up that piece, and we'll go research and develop on that. So it's a very powerful piece of the puzzle.

[15:31] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I mean, it's exciting to see the evolution and hearing James speak about the drive to be this ecosystem and consortium of innovation, and now he's talking and doing it, James' background with being a robotics entrepreneur himself.

[15:46] Josh O'Leary: Oh, yes. He's fantastic.

[15:48] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. And so where do you see yourself in 10 years? What's your vision for Airwise and Tulsa? What's your next five, 10 years? What's top of mind, some goals, aspirations? Where do you see it in the next 10 years?

[16:03] Josh O'Leary: Well, I think we would all love to see, not just us, but I think we'd all love to see the regulatory environment such that these operations, specifically the Beyond line of sight ones, can become an everyday thing and that it's proven safe and that we have everything laid out so that we can do it. And everybody knows what lane they're in, no pun intended, because it's going to be like roads up in the sky, right? And just being able to do it as a group, like to go back to what you were saying from James is like, no one group can do all of this. You need a bigger entity and like a consortium to put all of these pieces together. And so that's what I'm hoping to see. And I think we'll continue to build into a very powerful group of everybody working together, finding what spot they can contribute and then making this environment happen. But yeah, to answer your question is like, I want to see drones located everywhere they want on the ground and in the air, right? So like drone delivery, like whether it be a cart running around the street and bringing you your food, or the drone drops your, you know, flying drops out your prescription off to somebody, or there's a lost child and a drone pops up and goes home. They're right over there, you know, and then you pinpoint it very quickly. It could go on and on and on. I mean, while we were talking to some people the other day, right, last night, they were using drones to deliver AEDs at a three mile radius, right? So like, these are all very good use cases. And that's like, it's only limited by our imagination. and O-Air did a fantastic demonstration with Tulsa Fire where they had a drone bring a blood drop in and then they had one of the Spot robotic dogs pick it up, carry it to the mock accident where Gabe was there and then we could administer the blood bag, right? So I mean, you can keep going, right? We can make up as many use cases as we have time to sit here and talk about it.

[17:47] Kevin Sofen: Well, that's amazing. Well, you're really doing some cool stuff here and leading the charge here in Tulsa and I'm excited about what Airwise is doing, what Tulsa's leading with OK State is doing And so on behalf of the industry and fellow first responders around us, keep on going, keep on innovating, and I'm excited to see what happens next.

[18:05] Josh O'Leary: Well, thank you. I appreciate your time.

[18:06] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, thanks for joining us. Take care. Thanks for listening to today's episode. What did you think? What did you learn? Hopefully something, right? Please reach out on social media with your thoughts on this episode and any other suggestions for future content. We look forward to capturing more important stories across public safety and are here at your service.